Welcome!
Today we continue our series in I Corinthians, looking at verses 10-17 of
chapter 3. I want to start today by telling you about my slightly exciting
adventure the Friday before last. I came to work early, before almost anyone
was around, parked and came through the basement entrance of my building on
campus. There, as I have many times before, I got in the elevator and waited to
be transported to the third floor. The elevator beeped as we passed by the 1st
floor, beeped again as we passed by the 2nd, and just before I
expected to hear the final beep and have the doors open, the elevator lurched
to a stop. At the same time, the number three on the control panel which had
suddenly been lit turned off, and so did the lighted display up at eye level of
the number three.
I
tried pushing the number three again, but nothing happened, nothing lit up. I
tried pressing other numbers – again, nothing. Now I am getting concerned. I
look more carefully at the elevator and notice there is a button with a picture
of a bell on it. I press it, and a bell rings quietly. That’s not going to do
any good, I thought, since nobody is here. Then I noticed a little door below
the control panel. I opened it and found a phone with a keypad. I picked up the
receiver and heard a dial tone, so I dialed 911.
“Hello,
this is Clemson University 911. How can I help you?” a young-sounding person on
the other end of the line asked. “My name is Carl Baum and I am stuck in an
elevator in the Fluor Daniel Building.”
“Really?”
he asked. I don’t think it was my imagination, but he sounded excited, even
happy to me. I guess the Clemson University 911 doesn’t get many people calling
who are actually stuck in elevators.
He
asked me how many people were in the elevator and I told him it was just me. He
then asked, “Are you all OK? Are there any health problems?” “I am just fine,” I replied. He told me
that he would call for the fire department to come out and rescue me. Then he
asked for my cell phone number. I told him that I was in a metal box and you
can’t get reception in a metal box.” “Really?” he asked.
You
need to understand that I am a professor in electrical engineering who
specializes in wireless communications. It took me a heroic effort to refrain from
trying to explain to him exactly why you can’t receive a wireless signal inside
a metal box. I succeeded. He said goodbye and I hung up.
I
then had nothing to do, but literally after a few seconds it dawned on me that
I hadn’t tried to manually force the doors open. I doubted that would work, but
it couldn’t hurt to try. I pictured myself getting the doors open and finding
myself halfway between floors, having to decide whether to climb up or crouch
down low to the ground and then jump down. I pulled on the doors and found they
did indeed open, although you had to pull hard. I got the doors partway open
and realized that I was not halfway between floors but only about 6 inches shy
of my destination. I took the small step out of the elevator and went to my
office, where I immediately called 911 back and explained that I had gotten out
and didn’t need a fire rescue, but that the elevator was definitely broken and
would need fixing. They said they would call off the fire department and inform
operations to fix the elevator.
Fast
forward to Tuesday, I again come in through the basement. Do I use the elevator
or climb 3 flights of stairs? Part of me really didn’t want to use the
elevator. The main reason I didn’t want to use it was because I didn’t want to
get trapped again – not because I was
scared, but because it would have been super embarrassing to call 911 again. I
could just imagine the 911 operator telling all his buddies about how this poor
schlep got stuck not once but twice
and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. Foolish, isn’t it? Prideful, isn’t
it? Why do I care so much about my dignity? So what did I do? Did I take the
elevator or not? I’ll tell you later in the message.
This
story actually does tie into today’s message on I Cor. 3:10-17. I want to back
up one verse, though, for context, to verse 9.
For we
are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. – I Cor.
3:9
We are given two metaphors for, well, us: God’s
field (we are like a field that God works), and God’s building (we are like a
building that God builds). The word translated “field” here indeed refers to a
cultivated field, where the ground is broken up, the rocks removed, the seed
planted, and a crop is growing. It’s a very alive kind of thing, not just a
bunch of dirt. You should picture not something like modern single-crop fields,
but something much more interesting – many crops are grown, perhaps also an
olive grove, a vineyard, and perhaps also buildings to support this work of
growing crops. Perhaps there is also a wall around the field for protection, a
watchtower, a winepress, and so on. The picture here is that God is building
something quite special, something protected and secure that will be producing
much fruit, many crops, for a long, long time. This is not something shoddy,
but something quite impressive. You are God’s field!
The word here for “building” is similarly not
just a simple four-wall structure, but something again quite impressive. The
type of building (one of several root words to this word) is domos which describes a family
residential complex, the kind used by the wealthiest Roman families. We are
talking about a place with many rooms for particular purposes, connected by
various passageways, including an atrium with its large square opening to the
sky and its marble water collection pool on the ground underneath, a receiving
room, a dining room, bedrooms, servants’ quarters, a kitchen, and so on. There
is fine art and statues everywhere. I know that some of you have played with computer
design tools at designing a dream house – this is the idea of what God is doing
with us. You are God’s dream house in the process of being built!
Unlike that building I work at, where the
elevator didn’t work, or unlike maybe your home, where you are constantly
having to fix things that break down, God’s building is something that is
ultimately not subject to human error or the forces of nature and decay. God’s
building is something that is made to last forever.
And unlike the tower of Babel, where man tried
to build a tower to the heavens, to make himself equal to God, this tower is
not being built in opposition to God, but by God. God is the architect and
builder! But not only God. So are we. We are co-workers with God in this
amazing building project. The Greek word here is synergos from which we get synergy. We both have roles to play, not
separate roles, but working intimately together.
How does God build? Many ways, from leading
people to Christ to showing them that after 26 years they still care far too
much about their dignity. How do we work with him as co-workers? Many ways,
from following His promptings to reach out to unsaved people we meet or know to,
even after 26 years, experiencing God’s pointing out areas of sin or falling
short (literally what the Greek word for sin means is missing the mark) and
responding in prayerful repentance and humility.
Why does Paul remind the Corinthians of this?
Well, one reason is that they needed to hear it. The verses preceding this, as
John shared last week, highlighted how they were not working together even
among themselves; they were taking sides, creating divisions, one saying they
followed one person and another saying they followed another. Paul was trying
to get them to see that by doing this they were thwarting the work God wanted
to do.
And so it is important to understand that,
using the analogies of this verse, God isn’t saying that He is making a
separate cultivated field for each of us (or out of each of us) or that he is
making a separate dream home for each of us (or out of each of us). He is
saying that there is ONE field, ONE dream home, and we all are being made into
a part of it. And we all need to work synergistically with God and with each other so that we contribute to,
rather than hinder, His building work.
With this background we are ready to move into
today’s passage, starting at verse 10.
By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise
builder, and someone else is building on it. – I Cor. 3:10a
Paul is not boasting here – he is
simply stating what is true, that he was the one who first brought the gospel
to the Corinthians. He had lived with them for an extended period, helping them
to understand the Old Testament scriptures and the teachings of Jesus. He was
helping them learn how to live out what
they were learning to believe. He was discipling them, helping them to grow in
Christ, but then he had to leave. After that, others among their own number had
risen in maturity so that they could continue to build what Paul, empowered by
Christ, had started. The same is true for us, both individually and
collectively.
When I think about my life, I think
about some of the believers at our sister church in Champaign IL back in the
late 1980s and early 1990s who built into me. There was one pastor who
especially helped me grow through his teachings and by his example of humility
and faith. There were a number of friends who also helped me with how to have
quiet times and how to live out what I believed. These people laid my
“foundation,” and then when I came to Clemson, others continued to build – not
just pastors, although pastors certainly contributed significantly, but also
many of you. This is how it should
be; whether you move from one location to another or whether you stay in the
same place, at least some of the people who build into you come and go. To
misquote the title of a book I have never read, “it takes a village” to build a
Christian.
I think we take this for granted,
but I want to point out that it is actually pretty remarkable. This often
doesn’t work very well in other areas. I took piano lessons from age 5 until
age 23. I can tell you that with piano instruction, teachers at the higher
levels have their own styles, their own methods of technique, and it is
difficult for a student to switch from one to another. I switched teachers
around 5th grade, and it was a difficult transition as I had to
unlearn some bad habits my first teacher allowed. Similarly, in college I
switched to a fantastic teacher, a professor at UCLA, and it took years to
“unlearn” some of the (otherwise good) habits and practices I had earlier to go
to a new better method that my teacher used. Although I am not a sports person,
I have heard the same kind of thing repeatedly when one gets to the higher
performance levels in sports.
This is often true in industry and
in business as well. It takes a long time to train someone in a new job
position, because the way that particular company does things is invariably
significantly different from the way the employee did things with their
previous employer.
But for Christianity this should not
be true. Yes, there might be minor differences in doctrine or in how you “do”
church when you meet together, but how you live out your life as a Christian
should be the same wherever you go. This is in part because we all have the
same “manual” and it is also because we share the same Spirit. This is why you
can meet a new believer and almost instantly connect with them on a deep level
if you talk about the Lord with them. Again, you may take this for granted, but
I marvel even when we meet together as Faculty Commons, our Christian faculty
group on campus. I have easily and quickly made deep connections with people
from a variety of churches, a variety of cultural backgrounds, and a variety of
races. God is building one building!
And so we can view what God is
building (and we get to participate in) as individual works in the lives of
each believer, but there is also the view of what God is building in local
bodies of believers, in regions, and then in the entire body of all believers
in the world. God is drawing people from every tribe and nation to Him, and if
not here on earth, then certainly in heaven, we will see just how grand and
awesome is God’s building work!
But Paul, led by the Spirit,
continues with a warning:
But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any
foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone
builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or
straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it
to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of
each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a
reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be
saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. – I Cor. 3:10b-15
Build with care! [Think Jenga.] I am
reminded of a recent Faculty Commons devotional sent by Prof. Sam Matteson, a
retired professor, who, reflecting back on his career, said this:
“Was I a success? 1. Twelve years of
my tenure were spent as an administrator. But now to my dismay, prudent
policies that I implemented lie abandoned like yesterday’s newspaper. 2. In a
scientific career begun to ‘boldly go where no man had gone before,’ [hey, he’s
a physics professor, so he’s going to be a little nerdy!] few tangible
accomplishments survive. While it gives me a ‘nice’ feeling to know that some
few truths that my collaborators and I uncovered have advanced knowledge, they
now belong to the category of What Everybody Knows. 3. While I remain friends
with many former students, I doubt that they remember most of the physics that
I taught them.
“What remains of thirty years?
Paradoxically, the most enduring effect of my career manifests itself in the
most ephemeral place: the lives of people. For example, on the first day of
class, simply identifying myself as a Christ-follower […] prompted many
students to seek me out to chat about ultimate issues. On other occasions, I
would meet for lunch with a student or a junior colleague. […]
“Looking back, I see that much of
what I built was fabricated of wood, hay, and stubble, but – thanks be to God –
some of my construction materials were provided by our Lord: gold, silver, and
precious gems.”
This for me is deeply profound. As I
have struggled over this past year with an increased workload, largely of my
own choosing, but something I felt at the time led by the Lord to do, Sam’s words
have at certain times chastised me and at others brought me great
encouragement.
There are countless ways we can
build with the wrong materials. Here are a few:
1. We can focus on a particular
teacher’s teachings “on top of” the Bible rather than on God’s Word itself.
This can happen via well-meaning Christian books, seminar speakers, homeschool
curricula, and other ways.
2. We can focus on doctrine to the
exclusion of “heart.”
3. We can focus on emotions to the
exclusion of sound thinking.
4. We can ignore the sin in our
lives.
5. We can focus so much on our
careers that we neglect our spouses or our children. (We may tell ourselves that
we are doing it to model diligent work to our coworkers or our families but
what they may see is simply a workaholic.)
6. We can focus on entertainment or
adventure or on simply living the “good life.”
7. We can try to build the kingdom solely
with money. (Giving is good, but it is only one small piece of what God wants
from us.)
8. We can mix up our western culture
and values with Christian ones. (They are not one and the same! This is a
constant danger in foreign missions.)
9. We can let pride get in the way
of what God wants to do with and through us – just as I almost allowed pride to
keep me from riding the elevator. (By the way, I did ride it, and nothing went
wrong.) These are just a few examples – there is unfortunately no limit to the
number of wrong ways to build!
I encourage you to let it sink in
deeply within you that these wrong ways will have no lasting fruit. If you put in a floor wrong in a house, all you
can do is rip it all up and start over. Fire will test the quality of your
work, and my work – all of our work! As that physics professor reflected, so
should we reflect, and not just at the end of our careers. What materials are you
building with right now?
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that
God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will
destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that
temple. – I Cor. 3:16-17
A switch of metaphors: You are God’s
temple. This is an astounding statement. Unfortunately we tend to gloss over
it, so let’s spend some time really thinking about the implications. The word
for temple is naos or naon which refers not to the entire
temple complex, but only to the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. Even when
the word is used in the classical Greek setting it is similar: it refers not
the entire pagan temple but specifically to the inner sanctuary where the statue
of the god was placed.
In the Temple in Jerusalem, of
course, there was no mere statue of God, but instead the Shekinah, the presence of the very Spirit of God, sometimes
described as having the appearance of a cloud, other times described in other
ways, but always described as awesome and holy and even terrible to behold, in
the sense that one’s own utter unworthiness and sin was all one could think
about when in that perfect presence. People in the presence of the Shekinah
repeatedly felt that they must be about to die, because no sinful man could
look on God and live. This wasn’t just something people were told, it was
something they knew deep down inside when they saw God’s presence. But now you are God’s inner temple! You are now the place where the Shekinah
is!
That Greek word naos or naon has as a root the verb naio
which means to dwell. So the temple was not really associated with a
building at all, except indirectly – more directly it meant the place where God
dwells. And so I encourage you think about this as you contemplate that “you
are God’s temple.” You are the place where God indwells, where He lives, where
He will remain.
I am reminded of something Jesus
said to the Pharisees and other leaders, part of His “seven woes”:
Woe to you, blind
guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone
who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the
gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also
say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by
the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’ You blind
men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?
Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar
swears by it and by everything on it. And anyone who
swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one
who sits on it. – Matt. 23:16-22
The
immediate context here was that the Pharisees were playing a game, kind of like
saying that if you make a promise but have secretly crossed your fingers while
making the promise, then the promise doesn’t really count. Well, crossing your
fingers doesn’t invalidate anything anymore than swearing by the wrong thing
invalidates anything. But let’s focus on the last two sentences: anyone who
swears by the temple swears by the one who dwells in it. The importance of the
temple is who lives there – God Himself. This goes for heaven too; the real
importance of heaven is that it is where God sits on His throne.
So
what is your importance? I would argue that there is cosmic significance to the
fact that you are where God dwells. Yes, God loves you and you are made in His
image, and all of this gives you great significance, but also there is
tremendous significance to the fact that you are one of the locations where God
dwells. And if you remain “in” Him, seeking to obey what He shows you, seeking
Him, then His dwelling inside of you will be a throne room, and as you obey
Him, He will be sitting on His throne.
In
Matthew 26 it is recorded that when Jesus died, the veil, the thick curtain of
the temple, 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, and one full inch thick, tore in two
from top to bottom. Often people explain this as a symbolic picture of how the
separation between the Holy God and sinful man has been removed forever. I
think this is a valid interpretation, but I also think the tearing of the veil
was a non-symbolic picture that “God had left the building.” That veil
separated God from the sinful people; in terms of the most holy place, in the
center, only the high priest could go there, and only after purifying himself
and only once a year. The veil was there to keep people from looking on God’s
presence and dying. But with the death and then resurrection of Christ, the
veil was no longer needed because God would no longer dwell in this building
built by men. Why? Because He was moving to dwell within us! God illustrated
this with the tongues of fire that settled on the disciples in Acts 2.
One
of Jesus’ accusers, in the trials of Jesus, as recorded in Mark, said something
ironically true:
Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against Him:
“We heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in
three days will build another, not made with hands.’” Yet even then their
testimony did not agree. – Mark 13:57-59
It
was a false testimony, yes, in the literal sense that they accused Jesus of
plotting to overthrow the temple building. But it was ironically true in
another way, a deeper way, because God did leave that building, turning it from
a naon into a mere shell (with a torn
veil). And a new naon was built, not
by human hands, but by the atoning work of Christ and the resurrection – the naon that is inside each of us. This is
an incredible thing.
Let’s
revisit the I Corinthians passage.
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that
God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will
destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that
temple. – I Cor. 3:16-17
Note
that we are collectively God’s
temple. The “Southern American” translation of the Bible (the “SAB”) for this
verse might read as follows:
Don’t you know that
y’all are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in all y’all’s midst? If
anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is
sacred, and all y’all are that temple.
We
aren’t temples, plural. We are that temple, singular. We, the bride of Christ,
are a bunch of individuals but God also sees us as one, in Him. Unity, as we
have seen, was a big problem for the Corinthian church. They didn’t understand
who they were – the single bride of Christ, the single temple of God’s Spirit.
Practically,
this means that we should live like what we are. It means we should be a part
of each other’s lives. It means we should be a family. God’s Spirit resides in
us not just so that we don’t sin (as much); He resides in us so that we can be
one, one in Him.
And
just as a good husband protects his wife, God protects us. It’s actually a
rather shocking statement: If anyone destroys God’s temple (that’s us), God
will destroy that person. The SAB version of this might read “If you hurt my
wife, you are going to meet the front end of my shotgun, and it’s going to be
the last thing you ever meet.”
I
think of when the people were carrying the ark and it started to fall and
someone touched it to keep it up – he died! It is hard for us to understand why
God would be so, well, strict about
this – but He is God; He is holy, and He does not allow the profane to touch
the holy.
Now,
we are God’s inner temple – you could think of it like we are His ark. And so,
despite our sinfulness, in Him we
have been made holy. Thus that strictness
applies to those who “touch” us as well. He will destroy those who try to
destroy His temple, and we are that temple. I believe the Old Testament
situation with the ark was a picture for us of how God feels about us. We are
His bride, and in Him we are without spot or blemish. He already gave His life
for us. And now He will guard us, punishing most severely those who try to harm
us.
And
so I hope you really take to heart these metaphors – of being God’s great construction
project, working with Him to build His church, and of being God’s inner temple,
the place where His presence dwells. These are awesome truths, transforming
truths, if we really embrace them.
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